


No Easy Road Home

by forthegreatergood



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Explicit Language, Gen, Unrequited Crush
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-05-26
Packaged: 2018-01-26 16:37:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1695158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/forthegreatergood/pseuds/forthegreatergood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky tries to get his head around the way things are now.  It's not as easy as he'd like, and Steve's new physique is only part of it.</p>
<hr/><p>“Stop giving me that look,” Bucky snaps.</p>
<p>“What look?”</p>
<p>“That look.  The one you were giving me two seconds ago, before I opened my mouth.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	No Easy Road Home

**Author's Note:**

> All characters property of Marvel.
> 
> Not beta-read. Please post any noticed errors in the comments, and they'll get fixed.

It’s the fact that Steve can’t stop grinning at him that finally does it.

“Pardon my French, Steve, but what the fucking _hell_ ,” Bucky snarls, glaring at him across a cold tin of what might be beef but could as easily be pork with some beans mashed in.

“What?” Steve asks defensively, looking around like it might not actually be him that’s the problem.

“Stop giving me that look,” Bucky snaps.

“What look?”

“That look. The one you were giving me two seconds ago, before I opened my mouth.”

Steve’s face falls a little, but he shakes his head.

“You mean that look like my best friend just came back from the dead?”

Bucky wants to throw the tin at him then, because that’s a low blow. His eyes must say it, because irritation sparks across Steve’s features, and he pulls him in close with one of those big mitts he’s got now instead of hands.

“I’m not kidding, Buck. I thought you were _dead_ ,” he says, his voice pitched low. “And then I find you still breathing? Maybe banged up some, sure, but breathing? It’d take the sun going out to make me stop smiling after that.”

“All right, all right. I get it,” Bucky grumbles, and he lets it drop. Steve’s grip on his arm relaxes and then his hand slides away, and Bucky feels like an asshole for wishing he’d keep it there. Steve looks around the makeshift camp and then looks back at him for just a second, and he’s making the face he makes when he’s trying not to show his cards too badly. Watching it’s even worse than watching him grin like this is some grand adventure.

“I’m sorry I couldn’t write,” he says suddenly, chewing his lip. “I’d have told you about all this is it wasn’t classified. I never meant to just spring it on you.”

Bucky shrugs. It’s a good excuse for not writing. Imaginative, too. Not once when his pile of mail turned out to all be from girls who’d liked his looks with nothing from Steve had it occurred to him that this was the reason. He should open his mouth, say something about why he didn’t write. Except there’s no good way to put ‘I was sore at you over the way you ditched me that night, and then I was sore at you for not writing, and then I didn’t know what to write because none of this was anything like they said it’d be, and I didn’t know if you’d believe me, and I didn’t want you to worry.’

Steve’s blushing a little, and he finally spits out the rest of what he’s been chewing on. “I was on the road a lot, too. We never stayed in the same city more than a few days. None of your letters ever caught up with me, so.” He pauses and takes a breath. “Any of the stuff you wrote about, I missed. I’m sorry, Buck. I’m kind of behind the times.”

Bucky stares at him for a few seconds, and then he nods. The hell with it. He’d almost died, and died bad, back in that butcher’s stall. He’s paid for his sins and then some. He’s going to let himself have this one little thing.

“Don’t worry about it. All you missed was planes, ships, and mud.” He fakes a grin. “Maybe an English girl or two, but I know how you hate it when I kiss and tell, so not much made it into an envelope.”

Steve’s posture softens, and he starts up with that dumb smile of his again, and Bucky refuses to feel guilty about the lie.

*****

The way back is hard, and Bucky knows Steve can feel it the same as the rest of them. He heals up quicker, and it takes more to wear him down, but he’s still human. It just doesn’t stop the corners of his mouth from turning up every time his eyes meet Bucky’s, and Bucky bites back the urge to yell at him again. He remembers the last time Steve got sick enough to have him praying over it, and he thinks about how tight he held onto Steve once the fever finally broke and the doctor said he was out of the woods. He tells himself that this is Steve’s first bad scare over him. He should cut him some slack when it comes to being stupid over it.

He just wishes his stomach would stop turning over every time he sees that smile. There’s a little voice in the back of his mind saying that Steve could punch out an ox and Steve’s an officer and Steve’s this, that, and the other, and all of it adds up to it maybe not being _that bad_ to try and kiss him now, doesn’t it? Steve doesn’t _need_ him anymore. Hell, Steve just single-handedly rescued him and a hundred-odd of his closest fellow-prisoners. It wouldn’t be taking advantage, and there goes the surest defense in his fight with himself. He’d thought he’d won that fight good and proper, but it turned out to be another Maginot Line. The rules all got changed when he wasn’t looking, and now he’s right back in it. All that’s left is Steve telling him to go to hell, calling him a pervert, and never speaking to him again. Which, yeah, makes him break out in a cold sweat if he really thinks about it, but if Steve maybe wanted to kiss him right back...well. It’d be worth the risk. Except for now, Steve’s Captain goddamn America, and even if Steve might want to kiss him back, he’s pretty sure that Steve isn’t going to let Captain America come off like the sort of guy to hang around in men’s washrooms.

It would be a lot easier if he could just see that smile and not want to kiss it.

*****

Steve’s ordering another round for his merry band of misfits when Bucky thinks he’s finally gotten up the nerve to talk about what’s been gnawing at him. He doesn’t exactly remember the night the factory went up in flames. Or, more accurately, he doesn’t know what he remembers and what he made up from whole cloth. He thinks the whole thing was real. It didn’t feel real, but he’s pretty sure most of it happened. He thinks Steve told him the same man that turned him into this turned Schmidt into that. He knows, from bits and pieces and flashes, that the scientists who pumped him full of poison and tortured him were trying to reproduce some kind of super-man formula. There was one time in particular when one of the doctors had mentioned unfortunate side-effects, and he’d heard that voice--cold as hell and twice as mean--ask the doctor what unfortunate side-effects he meant, and he’d thought the man was going to piss himself.

He thinks he remembers asking Steve if it hurt, and Steve saying ‘a little.’ He sips his drink and wishes he could just stop thinking about it. But then he wonders why they took Steve of all people, his skinny little pal from Brooklyn who couldn’t have been any less fit for duty if he’d tried, and he can’t turn his brain off. 

There are good answers. He knows there are good answers. If you’re going to turn someone into an unstoppable fighting machine--which he’s personally not so sure is a great idea in the first place, but nobody asked him--you’d better damn well be sure it’s not somebody you’re going to regret handing that power. He could’ve come up with that one before he’d even gotten within a mile of Schmidt. And Steve’s so good and so noble and so tenacious that whoever made the call isn’t ever going to lose a wink of sleep over it on that account. If he had the whole of New York to pick from, he’d settle on Steve every time, and he’s not sure how anybody who’s ever spent more than five minutes with Steve could say different.

But there are bad answers, too, and they involve the sort of calculations where a kid with a history of health problems and no next of kin would be a bonus instead of a detriment. All the better if that kid with a bad set of lungs and no one to ask what happened is someone who’d do absolutely anything to feel like he was making the world a better place and sign whatever was put in front of him. Bucky’s never claimed to be a genius, but he’s never been a dummy, either. And he’s damned sure he doesn’t want to volunteer for a lot of dirty work for the sort of people who’d look at Steve and throw him into a meat grinder to see what came out the other side.

He almost manages to corner Steve after he drops the drinks off, but he finds himself being cornered instead. Steve gives him a big dopey grin, and if he didn’t know better, he’d think Steve was trying to pick him up. He does know better, but his heart beats a little faster all the same. It’s ridiculous, how easy that smile gets to him. He grabs the last shot off the tray Steve’s holding and downs it in one go.

“This _thing_ ,” he says in a rush, gesturing at Steve’s shoulders and arms. Steve stops, looking a little confused. “You said it hurt.”

Steve shrugs and looks at Bucky’s shotglass. “Ease up a little, Buck. I don’t mind taking you home in a wheelbarrow, but this is the good stuff. Make sure you at least taste it, huh?”

“How much did it hurt?”

The question’s got all the delicacy of a sledgehammer, but he doesn’t care. If he starts beating around the bush here, he’s going to chicken out. He doesn’t want to hear Steve say somebody hurt him when Bucky wasn’t around to stop it, and he doesn’t want to listen to Steve tell him to forget about it and sign on anyway. Steve frowns and looks away, and Bucky’s chest tightens up, because that’s about the same thing he used to do when he didn’t want to admit to how bad he was feeling or how hungry he was. It’s the look that used to start arguments that ended with “Ain’t nothing to be done about it, Buck, so quit hassling me, would you?”.

He gives Steve the mulish look that always kicked off the yelling part of the spat, and Steve sighs and settles onto the barstool next to his.

“It hurt like hell,” he says flatly. “For a few minutes, anyway.”

“And they kept going?”

“And they tried to call it off. I told ‘em to keep going. We were halfway there, and who knows what would’ve happened if they’d stopped midway? After getting a look at Schmidt, I’m damn glad they listened to me.” He shivers a little. “It’s not like I didn’t have some idea what I was getting into, Bucky.”

Bucky has to laugh at that, because like hell Steve knew what was going to happen. The first man to get on that horse got turned into a monster right out of a screamer reel, and Bucky can accept the idea that Erskine had a gun to his head on that one. Steve’s told him Erskine was forced to work for them, escaped, started working for the Allies, and got gunned down for his trouble. He doesn’t think Schmidt was the sort of guy who liked hearing ‘no’ or ‘not yet’ even before he lost his face. But it’s not like the next fella in line knew what to expect after the doctor said it was ready.

Steve takes his laughter as a good sign and pulls him into a hug, and Bucky’s still not used to being able to rest his chin on Steve’s shoulder instead of the crown of his head. The hug goes on a little bit too long, and Bucky can feel his cheeks starting to color, and he’s going to have some explaining to do if he doesn’t cut this short. He elbows Steve away and laughs again when Steve frowns at him.

“You aren’t ever gonna get sick of being taller than me, are you?” he demands, smirking. It comes out a little sour, and he wishes he felt like laughing, wishes he didn’t have to fake it.

“I’ll get sick of that right after you get sick of being a jerk about it,” Steve retorts. He looks down and then looks at the empty glass on the bar. “If I’d known this _thing_ was gonna save your life like that, I’d’ve been willing to go through a hundred times worse.”

Bucky wants to say something to that, but before he can get his tongue around the words, Dugan’s yelling for another round from halfway across the bar. Steve squeezes Bucky’s knee and gets to his feet without looking at him.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” he mutters, and then he’s fake-smiling for the guys. They’re too drunk to notice, and Bucky envies them for the few seconds he can still feel the warmth of Steve’s fingers on his skin. He wonders if this is how Steve feels when Bucky fakes a laugh or two to paper over the rough spots.

He’s pretty sure Steve is telling him the truth, but he’s positive that even if he isn’t, Steve won’t ever regret it for a second because it’s the reason he, James Buchanan Barnes, is still walking around instead of being reduced to a folded-up flag and form letter expressing the Army’s regrets. Weighed against that, Steve’s incapable of questioning it. Bucky grinds the heels of his palms into his eyes and knows he can’t do anything but fall in.

*****

Bucky’s just beginning to think he might have a shot with Steve after all when he meets Peggy for the first time. It’d been one thing to keep striking out with the girls when he was little and tongue-tied and asthmatic. Now he’s practically a pin-up, and he still acts like a deer caught in headlights whenever a woman smiles at him. He’d started to consider that maybe girls just didn’t much do it for him when Peggy walks in, and Steve’s face lights up like Christmas, and Bucky figures he should have seen this one coming from a mile away. Steve’s got no use for the girls finally giving him the time of day because he’s head over heels for one girl in particular.

To make it even worse, Peggy smiles back at him--and Bucky knows that look, knows that she’s gone, too--and then Steve somehow turns out to be an even bigger idiot than Bucky gave him credit for. He can’t believe it when Steve straightens up like he’s about to salute and starts in with Agent Carter this, and Agent Carter that, and “Agent Carter, I’d like you to meet a close friend of mine.” Captain America can storm a hostile base and form a commando team with no help from the brass, but Steve Rogers apparently still needs some help asking an interested lady if she’d like to have a drink with him.

Bucky flirts a little and keeps glancing at Steve, waiting for him to take the bait or get the hint or put two and two together, and he suddenly knows how every cat who ever brought him a dead mouse felt when he never started hunting for himself. It’s like trying to teach a pigeon to swim. The only thing he accomplishes is annoying Agent Carter, who almost looks through him when he finally gets her attention. He hopes for Steve’s sake she’s less dense than he is, because if she’s just as oblivious, the two of them are gonna be old and gray before they even kiss.


End file.
